Baynote Leads Users To Web Content. Will They Drink?

What brought you to this blog? And what will you do after reading it? Startup Baynote tries to use what it knows about the first question to answer the second.With two rounds of financing under its belt and about 60 customers, Baynote is in the business of online marketing, Web site optimization, and "socially driven" search. Its service is used by e-commerce sites such as US Appliance and US-Mattress.com, and by a bunch of tech vendors, including Cisco, Juniper Networks, Motorola, NetApp, and, most recently, VMware. Applications, in addition to e-commerce, include e-marketing and online support. Sometime soon, Baynote will announce a version of its service for media companies.

Baynote was founded two and a half years ago by Jack Jia (CEO), Scott Brave (CTO), and Rob Bradshaw. Its software, offered as a service, tracks the online activity of Web site visitors and lumps people into affinity groups based on patterns of behavior. Baynote then makes product or content recommendations based on what it knows about the actions of kindred spirits.

Bayote doesn't require thousands of site visitors to draw such comparisons -- a mere seven like-minded people is enough to account for a peer group, says CEO Jia. It's a spin on the "wisdom of the crowds" theory.

If Google is the king of PageRank, Baynote wants to be known for "UseRank," a term it trademarked that places value on content usage rather than page links. The thinking is that like-minded people are interested in the same kinds of products and content, so you raise your chances of success in selling to them, or getting them to click through, by pushing products and content in front of them.

It's all based on the notion that people's actions on the Web are somewhat predictable. Yet it's also true that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. So, others like me have purchased the blue mountain bike? No thanks, I'm looking for a red racer.